Unanswered
by ZBBZL
Summary: After several years of successfully being a part of the NCIS team and forming a deep, seemingly unbreakable bond with Kensi, it is discovered that Deeks is actually a bad guy, a dirty cop.


Title: **Unanswered  
**Timeline: Somewhere down the road  
Prompt: After several years of successfully being a part of the NCIS team and forming a deep, seemingly unbreakable bond with Kensi, it is discovered that Deeks is actually a bad guy, a dirty cop.

**A/N**: _Please take note of this. I am NOT coming back to fanfic. I got this prompt from Jess a long time ago on Tumblr, and decided it was just a tiny bit too long to be a drabble, but also a tiny bit too short to be a real fic, but I still wanted to give it some real exposure because this is the first time I'm venturing into those dark woods. So let's make a deal: just like high school reunions, I'll come out every ten year to give you a little something, and then I'll go back to the retired life. Deal? :)_

_By all means, hope you enjoy._

* * *

He's no different, and yet, nothing will _ever_ be the same.

She stares at him on the screen in the boatshed, and for the first time in forever, his messy golden curls and bright ocean eyes don't make her melt just a little bit inside. There's no wolfish grin tugging at his lips today; no cocky smirk, no amused gleam in his eyes. Deeks is sitting in the interrogation room, seemingly lost in thoughts, almost bored.

He looks calm – _terrifyingly_ calm, for someone sitting on the suspect side of the table.

"I'm going in," Kensi finally says, breaking the tense silence in the boatshed. Sam's never looked angrier and more disgusted, and Callen opens his mouth to say something but only ends up gasping. What could he say, anyway? That she's too close, that she shouldn't be the one talking – _interrogating_ – Deeks?

It's _precisely_ because she's so close to him that she _needs_ to be the one going in there. She needs answers; she needs the _truth_ from him. Deep down, oh God, she still wants to believe that this is a screwed-up, sick joke; that he still is _her Deeks_, her partner, the man she's given her trust and heart to and that she's come to know like the back of her hand.

At least, that's what she thought.

He doesn't even react when she opens the door and walks to the chair on the opposite side of the table and sits. Doesn't look up, just barely sighs, as if he was already tired from their upcoming conversation – in eight years, not once has he ever acted like this towards her. He's been annoyed and angry and exasperated with her, true, but never indifferent. "Deeks, look at me," she tells him, her voice almost breaking, almost begging.

He chuckles. "_Deeks_…" he mimics her. "I thought they'd send you in to play with my heartstrings. Calling me Marty and pleading me with your puppy eyes," he snorts, finally looking up to meet her gaze. "But nope. You've never called me Marty in eight years, not even in bed, so why would you start now, uh?"

She resists the urge to close her eyes, press them firmly shut and conjure up all the sweet memories she associates with him. Landing on top of him after Deeks reached out and took her hands in his, pulling her out of a laser-filled room. How safe she'd felt back then. Their first kiss. Seeing him open his eyes after being shot. Hearing he was alive when he'd gone missing. Falling asleep, curled up to his side, after a movie night. The memories get mixed up in her head, their early moments and the more recent ones, being forced into this partnership and then getting to know the real him – _falling in love with him_.

But today's brought a question she hasn't asked herself in a long time: how well does she know the man sleeping by her side at night, the man who has her back when they're out in the field, the man who's been her partner for the past eight years?

Clearly, _not enough_.

Kensi sighs, rubbing the spot between her eyebrows where she can feel a headache gathering strength. That comment Deeks made about their private life is just so unlike him that she can't suppress a chuckle of her own. If it was meant to embarrass her, because surely Deeks knows that Callen and Sam and the rest of the team are watching, then it failed. If anything, it makes her sick. "I know what you're doing," Kensi says after a moment. "You're trying to make me hate you so I give up on you, so I fall into _this_ – whatever this is," she adds with a wave of her hand to the space between them.

"If that's what you want to believe," Deeks just shrugs, briefly glancing at the camera on the top corner of the room. "Come on, guys," he almost pouts. "Is this _really_ how you want to do this? Send in the pleading, delusional girlfriend, who thinks that she knows me _so_ well and that she can save my poor, tortured soul?"

"Just shut up," Kensi groans through gritted teeth, her fingers curling into a tight fist on the table. It's definitely furious rage racing through her veins now. "I do know you. You're a good guy. You became a cop because you wanted to protect people. So, _no_, I'm not buying that you were a dirty cop all this time." She pauses, hoping to see something waver in those deep blue eyes she used to love so much, but nothing happens; Deeks just resolutely stares back at her, his lips pressed into a thin line. "I'm not buying that the guy who almost died going back undercover to take Lazik down is a dirty cop. I'm not buying that the guy who held out his hands for me is a dirty cop. I'm not buying that the guy who's had my back and saved my life countless times is a dirty cop." She averts her gaze for the briefest second, before adding, "I'm not buying that the man I made love with just last night is a dirty cop._ I don't_. So, if you want to make me believe that," she sighs, "you'll have to try a lot harder."

Deeks' lips twitch in a grin. Not his trademark grin, but something much colder. "What is this really about, Kens?" he asks, and for just a second, a tiny, ridiculous second, Kensi _almost_ recognizes him. But it goes as quickly as it came. "What are you trying to prove here? That you know me so well, or that it's impossible that someone fooled great, perfect Agent Blye?"

Despite her best efforts to hide it, it stings. God, how it does. Because Deeks is half right about this. When they came into work this morning, and Hetty, Granger and Lt. Bates were waiting for them – for Deeks – in the bullpen, her heart had skipped a beat. When Hetty had managed to convince Bates to do the interrogation here, to give them a little time to talk to Deeks before he'd take him back to the precinct, a thousand questions had raced through her head.

How could they think that Deeks was a dirty cop?

_Could it be true?_

How could she had not seen it?

Why had he proposed? Was it all just part of a big cover?

What did it say about _her_, that she'd let him in her heart, despite her best judgment that people always leave?

Does she believe he could be a dirty cop? Absolutely not. But does she believe she could have been blinded by love? Kensi's _terrified_ of the answer.

Hadn't she spent her life admiring her father, only to find out years later that he was not the man she'd thought he was? Hadn't her love for Jack, and the promises the future held for them, blinded her so much that she hadn't seen he wasn't getting better? Why would Deeks be any different?

"_Why can't you see I'm not like them?"_ he'd said, once, during a fight. She'd said it was a mistake – _them_, the night they'd just spent together – and he'd said that she needed to stop living her life in the fear that people would always end up breaking her heart and leaving.

Kensi can't help but wonder why he'd done that. He certainly didn't need to get involved with her to gain her trust. He didn't need to pretend to love her. Was it all just false pretenses? Had there not been anything _real_ between them?

"I think," she starts slowly after a long moment, "that you got involved in a hot mess, something you can't escape from, and that you'd rather lose me so you can protect me, than tell us the truth." Kensi bites on her lip, giving herself some time to think and ponder her next words – some time to compose herself, too. "I know you. If you think that lying to me will keep me safe, then you _will_."

"You really think I'd go to jail _for_ _you_?" Deeks asks her, almost amused. She's angry, utterly furious, and it only seems to amuse him even more. "That I'd spend the rest of my life behind bars so nothing happens to you? I'm not that chivalrous, honey," he laughs.

She smacks him across the face. _Hard_.

Deeks looks stunned for a moment as he raises a hand to his sore jaw. Kensi's eyes flicker between her own hand and the red mark on his face, wondering how one sentence, one word of his could have triggered this, the anger swelling up inside of her pulsing electricity through her entire body. Above all, she wonders why no one came in to force her to step out.

Maybe because that's what everybody's been wanting to do, too.

"I was right, then," Deeks murmurs, looking at her defiantly. "It's all about you, isn't it? You don't want to believe that maybe, just maybe you're not perfect and that you were fooled just like anybody else. You want to believe that I'd do anything for you because you like puppy Deeks, the wimp who does everything you ask. That's your thing, right?" he asks. "You don't want a partner. You want someone to love you unconditionally because Daddy and Jack –"

"Shut the fuck up," Kensi warns him, feeling the anger take complete control over her. 'Shut up, Deeks."

"It wasn't easy, but it sure as hell was fun," Deeks goes on, not at all scared of her threatening tone. She doesn't even know who the man sitting in front of her is anymore. "You know, most girls with daddy issues, they just fall in your arms easily. They just want someone to love them. But _you_?" He laughs, as if it was the funniest thing ever. "Damn, you're a tough cookie. Takes more than pretty smiles and flowers to –"

"I told you to shut up," Kensi repeats, standing up so abruptly that her chair falls backwards. She almost wishes Callen or Sam would come in now – fuck, she regrets coming in so much. "Why are you doing this?" she spits, bringing a hand to her temple.

"Why am I doing what?" Deeks asks with a shrug. "What do you want me to say? That I got lost in the way, but then I met you and love was my redemption?" He laughs again. "Yeah, once upon a time I was naïve and I thought that what we were doing here had some kind of impact on people, on the world…but I woke up. And I realized that it was all just bullshit we keep repeating to ourselves."

"And that's why you decided you could just…you could just go on and turn your back on everything you've ever believed in?" she asks him, eyes wide and her voice nothing but a broken, low whisper. "What about Jess Traynor? What about Eva?"

_What about_ _us_, she suppresses with her teeth digging into her bottom lip.

Deeks shrugs. "You do what you gotta do to keep cover," he says nonchalantly.

She feels the tears prickling at the corners of her eyes, and Kensi is unable to stop them. She shakes her head, angry with herself more than anything. "Was – was it all fake?" she asks, not caring anymore about showing him that he did achieve to hurt her. "Everything you've ever said to me…it was just a cover? Just so I wouldn't dig deeper and find out who you really were?"

She feels arms around her then, strong arms gently but firmly dragging her out of the room. She never heard the door open; never heard Callen's voice telling her that she was done in here. All she can focus on is the brief moment when she sees his mask slip for the tiniest second; the slow blinking of those long eyelashes, hurt flashing in those gorgeous blue eyes.

Or is it just her imagination?

* * *

_the end_

_or is it?_

(it is.)


End file.
